Water Resources Research at the Kimberly Research and Extension Center

One of the program areas at the Kimberly Research and Extension Center is Water Resources Research. The program is led by Dr. Richard G. Allen with the Department of Biological and Agriculture Engineering and the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Idaho. The program has historically focused on water resource issues related to irrigated agriculture: supply, measurement, crop water use, quality, application, planning, etc.

Current and Recent Activities

ASCE-EWRI Standardization of Reference Evapotranspiration (draft: Updated September 2002)

METRIC: Generation of Evapotranspiration Maps using Landsat satellite images.

Soil Water Management: Soil Water Monitoring with Inexpensive Equipment.

Surface Water Quality: Surface Water Quality and Irrigation Return Flow Monitoring.

Guidelines for computing crop water requirements: FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56 Crop Evapotranspiration

Evaporation and Consumptive Irrigation Requirements for Idaho (Allen and Robison, 2006 (rev. 2007) updated evapotranspiration (ET) and net irrigation requirement (NIR) estimates for areas in Idaho. New ET calculation procedures were employed including an updated reference equation. The results of the work and data sets are available at our ET_Idaho site and superceed those from Appendix E -- Estimating Consumptive Irrigation Requirements for Crops in Idaho (Allen and Brockway, 1983).

Interesting Links and Publications:

Selected Papers by R.G. Allen Selected papers (scanned) in various topics.

ASCE Task Committee Report on Water Use by Naturally Occurring Vegetation including an Annotated Bibliography, 1989, edited by Eldon Johns, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. (MS-Word) (Arcobat)

2003 International Workshop on Use of Remote Sensing of Crop Evapotranspiration for Large Regions. 54th IEC Meeting of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID), Montpellier, France, Wednesday, 17 September, 2003. Dr. Richard G. Allen (University of Idaho) and Dr. Wim Bastiaanssen (WaterWatch) Cochairmen. Workshop proceedings.